Photo Album
by Da Games Elite
Summary: AAML Years from now, two small children stumble upon a scrapbook from past, and learn new things about their parents and how they fell in love. As the children learn about the past, their father learns about the pain their mother felt when she left him...


Hey there! I am currently working on more Fan-fiction then I should, but this little AAML work should be able to squeeze in-between my other works nicely. Ash and Misty were two of the first characters I ever felt should be together, so therefore, I'm shocked I've never written a fan-fic for them. However, seeing as how the writers of the series seem to have either forgotten that little orange haired girl existed OR seem intent on crossing out her name from the history books of Pokemon, this will require a little bit of creativity to reach the end result. I seriously doubt that Pokemon will bring Misty back as a main character, so I suppose there's only one way to do this…to make this take place in the future!

And now, to the story that I clearly do not own, will not own (if I did, all AAML would have their happy ending), or do not plan on owning (I don't know Japanese! How would I direct an anime without knowing the local language?) Pokemon in any way, shape, or form.

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PHOTO ALBUMS

**BY DA GAMES ELITE**

Part 1

"Hey, sis! Slow down!"

"Don't be such a spoil sport, Tracey! You're such a wimp!"

"That's not a nice thing to say," the young seven year old boy mumbled, glancing down with a frown on his lips as his ten year old sister darted up to the attic, a mischievous grin on her lips. Tracey ran a hand through his dark hair, glancing around to check if their mother was in sight. Naturally, the coast was clear, but even so Tracey couldn't shake the vibe that their mother's blue eyes didn't catch their stealthy ascent to the attic.

"C'mon! What're you waiting for?" Tracey's sister, Dawn, snapped in a frustrated tone, dragging the ladder down from the ceiling above her head, dust falling over her orange locks that ran down to her hips, dust that she feverishly shook out of her hair, sputtering on cobwebs that she plucked off of her lips. "There's nothing up there, you know, so stop being a little baby."

"But what if the Gengar that dad caught is up there?" Tracey asked, nervously.

"Oh, of course! Because dad so keeps all his Pokemon home and not at that old Professor guy's ranch."

"Well, he keeps a few here," Tracey replied as he followed his sister up the ladder.

"Yeah, well, I really doubt that he keeps a Gengar around for the sake of it. Besides, don't you want to know where they keep the Christmas presents? Hmmm?"

"But I thought Santa Claus delivered them. Daddy told me he met him one time, and that there were a lot of Jinxes and—"

"Oh, you are such a little kid!" Dawn snapped, her hands on her hips as she shook her head in disapprovement, "God, why did I end up with such a pathetic brother, anyway?"

"I'm not pathetic!"

"Yeah, just keep telling yourself that. Now, where oh where are the gifts?"

The attic they had ascended into was a rather dark chamber, full of cobwebs and piles of dust bunnies. Dawn hesitated to bend down on her knees, due to the fact that, even while wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, she was afraid that the dust might creep through the fabric and lace her skin with repulsive filth. Tracey had no problem kneeling down, probably because he was a boy, but a little lady like Dawn couldn't possible get dirty.

Oh no.

Dawn's eyes landed on a rather large box lying in the corner. Her eyes glinted as she nodded over at the parcel. "Hey, Tracey! See that?"

"What? Is it a Gengar?"

"No."

"A Gastly?"

"No."

"Is it something scary?"

"Do you have a one-track mind or something?"

"No, I just—"

"No, don't answer that, Tracey. Do you see that box over there?" Dawn pointed over at the only object in the attic not covered by a layer of filth. Clearly, that meant it had been moved or disturbed recently, if all those mystery books she read were accurate. After all, it made sense, didn't it, that the only thing that would have been touched in the attic, an attic her mom and dad rarely used, was where her parents kept the Christmas gifts.

Surely.

"Oh, that? I don't think that's—"

"I don't care what you think," Dawn replied, bluntly, "I want you to go over there and open it for me."

"What!?" Tracey's eyes widened as he stumbled backward, almost falling down through the entrance to the attic. "Why do I have to—"

"Do you really want your big sis to do all the work?" Dawn asked, a cocky grin on her lips, "Seriously, I'm not gonna work if you can do the job for me."

Tracey's lips thinned as he shook his head in disbelief. "It's dark over there."

"Who cares? Go! Now! Or else I'll—"

"Do you hear something?" Tracey asked.

Dawn paused a moment to listen carefully. Tracey no doubt suspected a ghost or phantom, but she knew better. There was a sound beneath the floorboards, and as Dawn pressed her ear to the ground, her soft gentle cheeks barely stroking its filthy surface, she heard the sound of footsteps, of a body moving through the ground. Her heart pulsated against her ribcage as she realized that the appearance of one pair of feet and one body could only point toward one logical conclusion.

"It's a Gengar!" Tracey squealed, darting toward the box Dawn had indicated, and hiddiing behind it, his knees trembling.

"That's not it," Dawn replied, a note of panic in her voice, "It's mom! Ah crap!" Dawn hid beside Tracey, her view of the entrance into the attic obstructed by boxes and decorations stored in the unused chamber. She was trembling, realizing that, if her mother realized that they had snuck upstairs, that surely she'd punish them. With the arrival of her first Pokemon in a few weeks, the possibility that her parents might prevent her from retrieving a monster from the old professor was always a possibility, which meant that it would take another year for her to actually go out on her adventures.

That was something she could not tolerate.

She remained very silent, her soft hand clasped over her younger brother's lips, trying to restrain all sound that he could possibly make into his pot-hole. She breathed in and out slowly, her cherubic face covered in both sweat and dust. However, her eyes kept darting from her brother to the boxes obstructing her view to, finally, the box in front of her, her greedy fingers slowly nearing the lid, only to draw the cover aside, and find, to her extreme euphoria—

"It's just a bunch of books," Dawn grumbled, disappointed. She had hoped for packages and rewards of all sorts, but instead all she had was a bunch of stupid books. She flipped one open, pouting in her failure to achieve her goal, her brother gesturing for her to stop, to put the book down and run for the hills, to remain silent, but alas, the warning was lost on her.

Within the book were several pictures of people whose identities she did not recognize. They looked familiar, but they were people who were probably about her age, kids really. On the first page, there were three people, one was a boy with jet black hair contained under a scarlet and white cap, a blue jacket resting over a dark shirt hanging by his hips, a Pikachu resting on his shoulder. He seemed happy, a sparkle in his eye, but the girl standing next to him, an orange haired youngster with a single erect pigtail, her short belly-shirt and short-shorts minimalistic, revealing her scrawny body, wore a look of weariness, or perhaps disbelief, at her partner's exuberant euphoria at the prospect of whatever the hell they were doing. There was a man next to the two, however, with jet black hair and tanned skin, thin slits for eyes that mad it look like he was in deep concentration about something, who looked awfully familiar.

"Hey, is that Uncle Brock?" Tracey asked, softly.

Sure enough, that was their uncle, well, not really an uncle as he wasn't related to them by blood, but nevertheless that was him! He was clearly older than the other two individuals next to him, but he was there nonetheless. Why was he there? Who were the other two individuals there, anyway? Who was that guy? That girl?

And then her eyes landed on the little electric mouse resting on the boy's shoulder. Didn't her father's Pikachu rest on his shoulder like that? Didn't her father have a hat just like the on display over on the trophy counter where he kept all o the rewards he had received over the years, and all the rewards their mother had received, including the signature badge of the gym her mother ran to this day.

The Cascade Badge.

"You two seem to be enjoying yourselves." Dawn jumped into the air, while Tracey's eyes widened in terror. There, standing above them, arms crossed over her modest breasts, was their mother. She stared down at them, her lips curled into a disappointed frown as her eyebrows furrowed together. The young girl trembled in the wake of her mother's rage. Like a tsunami tumbling over a city, their mother reached down, and grabbed her daughter by the ear, pulling her to her feet, much to Dawn's squeals of pain. "What're you doing here?" their mother snapped, anxiously.

"Mommy, I'm sorry! It was all Dawn's idea!"

"Traitor!"

"Traitor? You dragged me up here."

"You wanted to see it."

"I had no idea what you brought me up here to see in the first—"

"Both of you shut up!"

"Yes, mommy."

Dawn and Tracey looked down at their knees, anxiously, as their mother picked up the photo album, glancing at the page they were staring at. Slowly, she smiled, a soft, tender expression spreading across her face as she went down onto her rear end, a small smile on her lips. "So you guys found these, huh?"

"What are these, anyway."

"Albums."

"I could tell that," snapped Dawn, "But who are these people, and why is Uncle Brock with them, anyway."

Their mother looked at Dawn as though she had just suggested that it was a good idea to have a Muk try to perform figure skating with a Snorlax. The look made Dawn's blood boil, but she suppressed her frustration, instead staring at her mother, her curiosity overwhelming her anxiety. After a few moments, her mother reached into her pocket, withdrawing a hair band. At first, Dawn wondered what she was doing. After all, her mother, whose hair shimmered past her shoulders, rarely had her hair up anymore unless she was doing housework, in which case she'd draw her hair back into a ponytail to ensure it didn't get in her way. However, rather than gather her hair into a ponytail, she gathered it into a single pigtail. It was only after a few seconds passed did Dawn understand. She glanced back at the girl in the photograph, then at her mother.

"That's you?" Dawn stammered, in disbelief.

"Yup, that's me when I was your age," she replied, smiling proudly.

"You were pretty scrawny," Dawn replied.

"Oh, shut up!"

"I don't think you were scrawny," Tracey stammered.

"Butt kisser," mumbled Dawn, "So who's that guy? Is that dad?"

"Yup," their mother replied, "Looked like an idiot, huh?" Dawn and Tracey giggled as their mom added, in a rather amused tone, "He always was a show off, wasn't he? Even as a kid. The big idiot." Her mother wore a rather bashful little smile as she turned the page, glancing at the net couple of pages of the album. There, on the pages of the album, were three small pictures. The first one showed a picture of Uncle Brock and their father, both really young, standing in front of a rather big structure, a huge ship. Dawn noticed, along the side of the ship, were the words "SS Anne."

"Hey, don't you have a model of that over in your trophy shelf?" Dawn asked, recalling a similarly structured ship in her mother's cabinet.

"Yup," her mother replied, nodding proudly.

"So you road on the ship, mommy?" Tracey asked, in awe.

"Yup, see?" their mother said, pointing toward the pictures beneath the first one. "That's a shot of the hallways, see? And this was the dinning hall, and, let's see here—" Their mother pointed toward the next page, where she described each of the individual pictures on the page, pointing out how it was relevant to the SS Anne.

"So what happened?" Dawn finally asked, "Why did you go on the ship?"

"Well, it was just we won a few tickets, but unfortunately the ship was attacked, and the ship capsized."

"What's capsized mean?" Tracey asked, confused.

"Means the ship flipped over and sunk, but most of the people got off safely. Except for us."

"So they just forgot you were on board or something?" Dawn laughed, "What idiots!"

"Yeah, well, we managed to get out, thankfully, and there were some other weird—ugh—Don't look at this page!" Their mother clasped her hand on the page, struggling to turn the page before her children noticed the images, but that only made Dawn eager to uncover what their mother was hiding from them. She grabbed her mother's fingers, struggling to pull her hand away so that she could take a clear look at the images beneath her palm. After a moment of struggling, Dawn pulled her mother's hand away, and caught a glimpse of her mother in a bikini, and two other people with rather large busts also posing.

She recognized both of them.

"It's those two," Dawn stammered.

"Who're they?" Tracey asked.

"You know, those two that are always around that old professor's lab. The ones who he makes carry all the stuff?"

"Oh, but those are two girls. The purple haired guy was a guy."

"Well, uh—" their mother stammered, struggling to figure out some sort of explanation, only for her children's curious glances to force her to uncover the truth about the images. "He strapped on inflatable breasts to win a bikini contest." Dawn and Tracey burst into a fit of laughter. "It's not funny! They had bigger breasts than—never mind that! Next page!"

Dawn watched as her mother, red in the face, turned the page. This time, the sheet was plastered in pictures of a statue in front of a shrine, standing watch before the ocean blue. When Dawn asked what happened here, her mother simply scowled for a moment before mumbling, "Brock is an idiot." The next page was covered with pictures of Butterfrees, to which their mother smiled a rather melancholy smile, before turning to the next page, which had a picture of a frightening looking tower. With each image, Dawn realized, there was a story, and, for the most part, her mother wasn't telling her any of them. All she did was just flip through page after page, smiling here and there before going onto the next page to reminisce.

The lack of communication and explanation was driving Dawn mad!

"So what's going on? What happened here?" she asked, pointing toward a picture of their father dressed in women's clothing.

"Well, this was your father being stupider than usual," their mother replied, smirking sarcastically. Tracey giggled at this, only for the orange haired adult to turn the pages, again and again.

"Hey, when did you take all these?" Dawn asked, curiously.

Her mother considered this, placing both hands on her lap as she glanced up at the ceiling, as though it could somehow tell her the answer she sought. "Oh, when we were kids on a journey."

"Oh, so this is dad when he first became a trainer, huh?"

Her mother nodded. "Yeah."

"So when did you put this scrapbook together?" Dawn asked.

"Well, a few years down the line, when I had to come back home, I just had all these left over pictures, and, well, I figured it might be nice to just have some memories of when I was with my friends."

"But almost all the pictures have dad somewhere in them," Dawn replied as Tracey laughed at a rather goofy image of their father riding an armada of Tarous, "Did you like him even then?"

"Well, didn't I ever tell you about how your dad and I met?" their mother asked, curiously.

"No," Dawn replied, nonchalantly.

"Well, I was fishing over by Viridian City, and I had biked over. Really intense ride, mind you, but you should be ready for it. Anyway, I had gone over there, and I had just started fishing, when I got this really heavy load at the end of my line. So I start getting really excited, and I start to pull really hard. Well, it winds up it's your dad, who had been running away from a bunch of Spearow. In retrospect, I know he was frantic and all, but I'm still really pissed that he had to steal my bike and run off with it. Ended up getting ruined in the fray, so I chased him down and tried to make him pay me back for it.

"But I guess, as I got to know him better, I kept following him around for a different reason. I told him it was because of the bike, but that wasn't it. I just felt at ease around him, just able to yell at someone as much as I wanted, and know that his opinion of me wouldn't be tarnished. It's strange, you know? I just felt, well, I just knew right then and there I didn't want to leave his side. No matter what. It was like a dream.

"And then after a few years of traveling with him, the dream ended."

Their mother's eyes began to wonder off, as Dawn realized that their mother's blue eyes had become watery, moist and rather wet with restrained tears. Tracey bit his lip nervously as Dawn shook her head. She didn't want to see her mother cry. She needed to remind herself she knew the ending of this story: their parents got married in the end, so clearly she wasn't still apart from him, so why was she crying? Was the separation that heartbreaking for her?

Dawn glanced aside at the piles of scrapbooks in the box. The one they had withdrawn was but one of dozens upon dozens. She must've taken so many photographs, collected them in such an ornate style, just to remember that one boy's face, the one special boy she could call her boyfriend (or, perhaps knowing how assertive their mother was, not call her boyfriend).

"Say, out of curiosity, how did you get all these pictures?" Dawn asked, changing the subject, "A lot of them look like they aren't posing."

Their mother's brow grew sweaty as her mouth opened a tad, a weird stuttering noise emerging from her throat. "Uh, well, um, you see, that's because I kinda, well, sorta, took the pictures without him, um, realizing."

"What do you mean?" Tracey asked, curiously.

"I just sorta snuck a camera in my pocket, and snapped pictures of him while we went places," Misty replied, twirling her thumbs around one another, averting her gaze as blush filled her soft cheeks, "So, uh, yeah."

"You're such a weirdo."

"Well at least I'm not the idiot who thought I'd keep your birthday gifts in the attic! Where'd you come to that conclusion anyway!?" their mother snapped, reminding herself of the reason she was in the attic in the first place.

Oh great! Now Dawn was screwed once again!


End file.
